Negative South: By The Numbers

Saw The Book of Eli. Awesome movie. Now on to the good stuff.

Numbers Stations and you...

Two days ago I was surfing the information super highway when I stumbled across an article about certain famous unexplained signals. There was one example of a supposed broadcast picked up from an area of outer space which scientists believe to be almost completely barren. There were also examples of porn and other things being sent through pirate signals that interrupted normal television stations (I once witnessed this myself), but then the article started talking about something that completely creeped me out.

On an AM band there is a broadcast that can be picked up using shortwave radios. The signal itself appears to be Russian in origin, and evidence shows that it is probably emanating from a military base. The broad sounds like bull horn beeps and continues for 24 hours except for three seemingly random instances where a man came on and read a series of names followed by a series of numbers. Only three times in 20 years has this happened. As of yet no one knows what these figures mean, but here's the really creepy part: the signal is live. On some occasions people have recorded conversations going on in the background which means that the beeps are just a device put up against the microphone.

The article went on to talk about another signal which shortwave enthusiasts dubbed “The Backwards Music Station.” Here's a recording. Make sure your speakers aren't turned up too loud.

Now this may sound like random noise, maybe some kind of mistake, but to broadcast something like that requires not only equipment and electricity to run it, but a person operating that equipment with some kind of expense involved. In other words this signal has a purpose. Research of the signal has shown that there may be some kind of encoded frequency buried inside it, and that some one has gone to great effort to hide it. The station itself has been caught broadcasting randomly on different frequencies. This leaves us to ask what the hell is it, and who is it intended for? There is no way possible for this to be some kind of accident. Let alone one that could be repeated.

So what the heck is going on? For the majority of these two days I have been researching the subject, and found that these broadcasts are referred to as “Numbers Stations,” which have supposedly been around since WWI and were used to broadcast encoded messages to troops and spies.

The signals themselves generally consist of short pieces of music or chimes followed by prerecorded female voices (though sometimes male voices are used) that read names and numbers (the names are generally believed to belong to the phonetic alphabet of their country of origin. The voice usually repeats for a certain period of time before they close with the same music or chime as before and disappear from the air.

The odd thing is that these broadcasts do not contain any information of origin, they contain no information on intended target, and absolutely no information that could be used for practical applications such as weather fax information or shipping signals. To put it simply these broadcasts are intended for a single person or specific group, and only that person or group knows how to interpret that message. It is a total mystery.

Now think about this. A shortwave broadcast can be tracked (with great time and expense) to it's broadcast origin, but absolutely any one can be pick these up, and there is no possible way to trace who is listening to them. So who are they intended for?

It's commonly believed that these signals are used to by drug dealers to broadcast drop information, military operations, and spies. Here we have one of the oldest and most secure method of transferring information to a single party, and for all we know it could be an alien broadcast or some one sending directions to have an individual assassinated.

The spies theory is most common. Though sounding far fetched consider these facts:

1) It is literately illegal (almost world wide) to listen to these stations. This suggests that they are being transmitted by government sources which has happened before, and some of the more well known signals have been tracked back to military bases.

2) As of this day only the Polish government has admitted to sending numbers stations broadcasts, but would not reveal why. The United States and the UK governments neither confirm nor deny the existence of numbers stations.

3) In September of 2009 a Cuban spie was arrested in the United States while receiving orders from a numbers station.

4) As the Cold War ended the existence of numbers stations has actually increased!

There's a lot more information on numbers pads, and how these messages may be encrypted, and I will include links for further reading. It's fascinating, and not very many people know about these things so you can dazzle chicks at parties.

So could this be a fluke? Believe it or not numbers stations are very common. Some run twenty fours a day, and others can be found at regular times and dates. Still there are some that just pop up randomly and perhaps only once so if you happen to be monitoring shortwave you could end up hearing these things completely by accident. Point is that numbers stations are a fact of life for shortwave enthusiasts.

Could this mean that they are hoax. No, transmitting these signals requires equipment well beyond the average persons budget, and lets not forget that we know for a fact that some of these are broadcast from military installations.

If you find this interesting and perhaps fairly creepy like I do then you'll want to hear it all for yourself. You can pick up a few videos on You Tube, but there's a better way. I don't own a shortwave radio (at least not yet), Thanks to You Tube I found out that a man released a four CD/four hour record of recordings from numbers stations called The Conet Project.

Apparently this thing is a cult hit, and now costs over 200 bucks if you want to buy it on CD, but! The label its under is now giving it away for free. You can download the album at their sight along with the booklet or download it from your favorite torrent site (the company encourages people to share it so this it completely legal). If you want to torrent it I will be seeding the file from my computer every day at 10 pm till I wake up so chances are you'll be seeding off of me. I encourage you to download them. They have a certain inspiring musicality to them that I find fascinating.

Here's a short program about numbers stations